Free Republic

The lawyer of an Iranian widow, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, has claimed that she has been subjected to '99 lashes' for "spreading corruption and indecency" in Tabriz prison after a false picture was published by the Times newspaper on 28 August this year for which it has already apologised. The unveiled photograph in question, published by the British tabloid Times, was reportedly not that of Sakineh, but of another woman of that country named Susan Hejrat, who lives in Sweden.

Mr Mostafaei, 37, is the human rights lawyer who represented Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for alleged adultery. He was forced to flee in July after he severely embarrassed the Tehran regime by broadcasting the woman's plight to the world. Unable to catch him, the Iranian police seized his wife, with her brother and father, and held them as hostages in Tehran's infamous Evin prison. His wife was incarcerated for 14 days. She was released only when Mr Mostafaei reached the safety of Norway and was beyond the regime's reach. But whether the Iranian...

Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, has also been sentenced to 99 lashes for a photo published of her without a headscarf, according to her son. Mohammadi-Ashtiani's son Sajjad said they learned of the new punishment from released inmates. The Times of London published on August 28 a photo of a woman without a headscarf that it said was Mohammadi-Ashtiani, however on September 3 it said the attribution of the photo, which it received from one of her lawyers that has fled Iran, was incorrect. The photo "... is certainly not that of my...